05/11/04

LC040511

This program is made possible in part by a grant from the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Val Zavala>> Tonight on Life and Times --

Sweet things with hidden surprises. We're talking toxic levels
of lead and wait until you see what these investigative
reporters found out.

William Heisel>> Most of the candies that are testing high are
testing high at a level that will poison a child's blood with
one candy.

Val>> And then, renting a masterpiece. The artists may not be
famous yet, but will your walls really know the difference?

All that and more straight ahead on tonight's Life and Times.

Life and Times is made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

Val>> It's the last thing you'd expect to find in a piece of
candy, traces of lead. Enough lead to be hazardous especially
to young children. But that's exactly what's been discovered in
candy and food items that come from Mexico. The Orange County
Register recently broke the story in a six-part investigation,
but what happens next and should you be worried enough to swear
off sweets? Toni Guinyard goes beyond the headlines in search
of some answers.

Toni Guinyard>> Depending on what kind of candy you allow your
child to eat, the sweets could be hazardous to their health.
High levels of lead have been detected in some brands of candy
made in and imported from Mexico

William Heisel>> Most of the candies that are testing high are
testing high at a level that will poison a child's blood with
one candy.

Toni Guinyard>> It's a warning coming not from the Health
Department, but from a team of newspaper reporters at the Orange
County Register.

Jenifer McKim>> We spoke to so many people who say my
grandparents ate that, my parents ate that, my grandparents
lived until ninety-nine and their not dead. A lot of people
said, you know, if this was true, everybody would be dead in
Mexico because we all eat this candy and there's a lot of
cultural pride. It's a candy that they love. It reminds them
of home, so there is skepticism.

Toni Guinyard>> McKim and her colleagues spent two years
researching this story. They've reviewed and analyzed thousands
of pages of documents, interviewed hundreds of people and made
repeated trips to Mexico. They also hired labs to test candy
for lead. The result? A six-part investigative report critical
of the FDA and the State Department of Health Services for
knowing about the dangers but failing to adequately alert the
public about the potential health threat.

Jenifer McKim>> We were able to see that, within a ten-year
period, they had hundreds of tests of candies that tested high
that they had done very little about.

Toni Guinyard>> So what do you say to people who may feel that
this is an absolute waste of time, that it's not that important?

William Heisel>> I would say it's definitely not a waste of
time considering that, you know, having high lead content in
your blood can ruin a child's life.

Jenifer McKim>> You don't drop dead, you don't start throwing
up. It's a process that you eat it over time and it affects
your development especially with young children. So a lot of
people say if I don't feel a symptom, then I don't believe that
it's actually a problem. They call it a silent epidemic.

William Heisel>> It can stunt their growth. It can impair
their intellectual development. It can cause behavioral
problems. At high levels, it can cause kidney damage.

Toni Guinyard>> The Orange County Register compiled a list of
112 candies that tested high for the presence of lead. The
response has been overwhelming. Several candy manufacturers
reacted by immediately sending letters to distributors defending
their products. Healthcare professionals in other states have
even begun testing candy.

Jenifer McKim>> I think a lot of people are calling for answers
at this point about what to do. Some counties are already
deciding to take the initiative on their own, to take the
candies off, and others are waiting for the state to tell them.
Our story basically showed that the state and the FDA weren't
doing enough.

William Heisel>> We spent a lot of time trying to understand
what happened in Mexico to allow this. We didn't take it as a
straight xenophobic reaction that, if it's from Mexico, it must
be bad. We wanted to understand.

Toni Guinyard>> The series is clearly having an impact, yet
candy that appears on the list of so-called toxic treats remains
on most store shelves.

Mark Trop>> And that is the list of the most popular items that
are out there. That bothers me because, if that's true, if what
they're saying is true, then I'm really bothered by it.

Toni Guinyard>> Mark Trop is president of Dandy Boy,
Incorporated, a family-owned business formed in 1946 to sell ice
cream. The company expanded its product line to include candy
and snacks years ago and is now promoted as one of the largest
distributors of Mexican candy on the West Coast.

Mark Trop>> Last year, there was $200 million dollars worth of
Mexican candy imported into the United States. That's twice
what it was in 1997 and it will probably be twice that in three
or four years. Mexican candy is a big, big business.

Toni Guinyard>> Mark Trop says the sale of Mexican candy
accounts for twenty-five to thirty percent of his business and
he says, if the FDA is not doing its job, it makes it difficult
for him to do his job safely. Are you concerned about selling
any of this to your customers?

Mark Trop>> At this time, I'm not. Until the FDA tells me,
Mark, we have a problem, I'm going to keep selling the candy
because as far as I know, the FDA has told me the candy is fine,
the companies I've called up in Mexico have told me that the
candy is fine, then as far as I know, the candy is fine. If I
even think that any of this candy is not, you know, proper to
sell, I won't sell it.

Toni Guinyard>> For now, he's selling it.

Mark Trop>> It's like they took the most popular candies and
they went after them. This here is like one of our -- it's been
the original and it keeps on selling.

Toni Guinyard>> And customers continue buying it.

Mark Trop>> Honestly in my heart, I honestly think this is old
news. I really think that this is old news.

William Heisel>> We did our own tests and were getting high
hits of lead, so it's not an old news problem. I could go buy
candy right now, take it to be tested and we're going to get
some high hits.

Toni Guinyard>> Despite the findings, the toughest challenge is
convincing the public the threat is real.

Jenifer McKim>> There's also the feeling that, as Americans,
there is some conspiracy to hurt the Mexican candy market which
is growing by leaps and bounds with the growing Latino community
and the market coming up here to meet the demand.

Mark Trop>> It's not so much it has to be Mexican candy or
Latinos who want to buy Mexican candy. It's people who like the
flavor. It's spicy. It's like people who like Thai food.

Toni Guinyard>> In order to understand why Mexican candy is
being targeted, it helps to understand how the Department of
Health Services first made the connection between the candy and
poisoned children.

William Heisel>> They go to these homes, they test all the
soil, they test the paint, they test the pottery, they're not
getting lead hits. They test the candy, then they're finding
lead, and the candies they were testing were made in Mexico. So
that's what's been driving what the regulators have been doing
and it's what drove what we did.

Jenifer McKim>> It's not like candy makers in Mexico are
maliciously adding lead into their ingredients, sugar, salt,
lead.

Toni Guinyard>> The source of lead includes the lead-based inks
used on some candy wrappers and the lead-based glaze adorning
pots containing some brands of tamarind candy.

Jenifer McKim>> One of the things we found out was that it's in
the chili. It doesn't happen in the fields, but it can happen
because they don't wash it well enough. It's part of the
manufacturing process.

Toni Guinyard>> Chili is an ingredient found in many Mexican
candies.

Bob Trop>> Chili, lemon, salt, sugar, what can we say? They
love it, they grew up with it and we're happy to sell it to them
if it's healthy. As far as we know, it's healthy.

Toni Guinyard>> But it's what the public may not know that is
of greatest concern.

Bob Trop>> We're talking about very, very large companies in
Mexico and we're also talking about a large company in Mexico
that's owned by the largest candy company in the United States,
Lucas, owned by Mars.

Mark Trop>> Now I'm thinking I can't believe that these
companies, and they are big, big multi-million dollar companies,
did not clean up their act. I can't believe they didn't do
that. It's not hard for them to do.

Toni Guinyard>> Mexican candy distributors and retailers are
caught in the middle. They know the impact of the Orange County
Register investigation is just beginning.

Jenifer McKim>> I'm encouraged by the fact that folks want to
go down to Mexico and work to see the problems sorted out.
There are talks about working with candy companies to help them
find out where the sources are and clean up the problem so that
the candy on both sides of the border is not toxic.

Toni Guinyard>> And consumers are at least warned about the
health risks.

Val>> The Orange County Register continues to follow this story
and you can go to their website for updates. While you're
there, you can click on a complete list of all the candies that
may contain hazardous levels of lead.

Kcet.org is the place to look for the very latest on Life and
Times. You'll find previews of upcoming stories, transcripts
and audio of past episodes and links to some of our most
interesting features. Just go to kcet.org and click on "Life
and Times".

Val>> California is full of stories of immigrants who are
barely getting by, but there's another side to the story,
immigrants who have come here and made it big by climbing the
corporate ladder to success. As I've found out, they've done so
with help from a program that recognizes talent and offers a leg
up.

Meet Consuelo Lomeli, a twenty-seven year old college graduate.
She's headed to her office on the twenty-fifth floor of the Bank
of America Tower in downtown Los Angeles. Her father was killed
in Guadalajara, Mexico and her family came to Huntington Park
when she was fifteen. She didn't know a word of English. Today
she is an analyst for Bank of America Capital Management.

Consuelo Lomeli>> I look at every asset that the portfolio
managers invest in and we determine what the gain or the loss
would be from such investment.

Val>> Within twelve years of her arrival, Consuelo had mastered
English, graduated from high school with excellent grades and
went to college on a scholarship. She earned a degree in math
and started working for B of A. She also got some help from an
internship program called "INROADS".

Consuelo Lomeli>> I was talking to my friends, upper class
friends, about a summer job and they came up with this idea, you
know, let's go up to the INROADS program. I wasn't really sure
what that was all about.

Val>> But they knew what it was.

Consuelo Lomeli>> They knew. They were interns at that point
and they were working in really good companies, with credit card
companies, utilities, California Edison, I remember that, really
good names, really strong companies.

Claudia Farrokhi>> Our mission is to develop and place talented
minority youth in business and industry and prepare them for
corporate and community leadership. So basically, we're helping
companies and corporate America obtain young talent that they
groom for future full-time positions.

Val>> Claudia Farrokhi is Manager of the INROADS program. It
was started thirty years ago in Chicago.

Claudia Farrokhi>> We were founded by Frank Carr who believed
that it was important to start teaching people how to play the
corporate game. Actually he was inspired because he
participated in Dr. Martin Luther King's "I Have a Dream" speech
and he was so motivated that he realized that there were a lot
of people in what he termed the ghettos and barrios of corporate
America that didn't know how to play the corporate game.

Consuelo Lomeli>> It might seem very obvious right now at this
level where I am right now, but back then when I was in college,
I had no idea what to do, what to say, you know, how to put your
resume together, how to go through the interview process, how to
answer all the questions, how to shake hands with the
interviewer. It was really good. The best thing about it is
that the people who were training us were volunteers from the
different companies, so we were getting the hints from
recruiters.

Val>> It's dinner time at the Lomeli home in Lakewood. The
family is made up of engineers, lawyers, nurses, mechanics,
students and business owners. The family spans three
generations from Consuelo's mother to her three year old
daughter, Julietta. The only one not here is Consuelo's father.
Felipe Lomeli ran for political office in Mexico's opposition
party and won. Shortly afterwards in 1985, he was killed.

Consuelo Lomeli>> It was for political reasons, but the way
things are in Mexico, the legal statement was that it was an
accident. Something happened to his car and he was fixing the
car. Eventually another car came and hit him, so he ended up
trapped between the two cars. It was my father and my brother.

Val>> When Consuelo's family moved to Huntington Park, the high
school was so crowded that she was bussed an hour and a half
away to Pacific Palisades.

Consuelo Lomeli>> You were forced to speak English and that's a
key. When you're trying to learn English, you have to be
forced. Just looking at the books will not do it. You know,
doing your homework, that will not do it. You have to be
exposed.

Val>> With good grades and a knack for math, Consuelo was
college material except for one thing. Her permanent residency
papers were still being processed, so she was considered
illegal, this at a time when Proposition 187 was closing doors
to undocumented immigrants.

Consuelo Lomeli>> I was trapped in that legal status, in limbo,
yeah. I was about to get it, but it would take, I believe, two
more years. So I was very lucky that one of the teachers from
Pacific Palisades, actually the principal, found out about my
case. They were already asking me, where are you going with
those grades and all these community services you do? Where are
you going? Well, I told them what was going on and they decided
to give me a hand and they started talking to private schools.

Val>> Claremont McKenna came through with a scholarship.

Consuelo Lomeli>> So two weeks, I got a phone call and they
said, are you still interested? I said, of course, I am.

Val>> Consuelo is now married and has a little girl. Her
father would be proud of her. She's done in twelve years what
usually takes two generations to achieve. The INROADS program
is one reason, but she also credits her mentors who were neither
Latino nor female.

Consuelo Lomeli>> Most of the people that have helped me to be
where I am are white males. It doesn't have to do with race,
you know. If somebody is really willing to help you, they will
do it regardless of the race. I'm really thankful for that.

Val>> After years of paperwork and patience, Consuelo is now a
United States citizen. She says many of her school friends were
bright and could have done well, but didn't have the necessary
papers.

Consuelo Lomeli>> I feel bad because, when I was going to high
school, I had some friends who were exactly in the same position
that I was, were as qualified, as talented as I was, but they
didn't get the opportunities that I got. It all boils down to
becoming a legal resident.

Val>> Census data shows that, in the 1990's, Mexicans made up
the largest group of immigrants coming to California, forty-six
percent. That's six times as many as any other country. And as
California continues to struggle with immigration issues,
Consuelo says the right opportunity at the right time can pay
off.

Consuelo Lomeli>> If you're talented, if you are willing to
learn, if you want to get into business, you can do it.
Hopefully, one day I'm going to be able to help other people.

Val>> The INROADS program began about thirty years ago and at
that time they had only twenty-five interns. Today they have
5,500 and, where they used to have only seventeen participating
companies, today they have seven hundred.

To send a comment or a question to our program, you can reach us
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Life and Times
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Val>> You say you've always wanted to fill your house with
beautiful art, but you've never quite had the cash flow to do
it. Well, how about renting a masterpiece or two? That's
right. You can do just that at the Los Angeles County Museum of
Art. The artists may not be famous yet, but their work is still
topnotch and, as Vicki Curry reports, your walls will never know
what hit them.

Vicki Curry>> It's a world-class museum with major works and
high-profile exhibitions, but there's a little-known part of
LACMA that may surprise you. Some of the works on these walls
are for sale or for rent.

Gail Rachelefsky>> And I think that's a service that I don't
know anywhere else where that exists. One of the great values
of renting art is if you're just not quite so confident and
you're not really sure what your taste is. You have an option.
You can rent. You can build your taste in art.

Vicki Curry>> That's thanks to the LACMA Art Rental and Sales
Gallery which offers over four hundred pieces by local working
artists. Anyone can purchase them and museum members can rent
them.

Gail Rachelefsky>> And I think that that is, for me, the most
incredible part of this gallery. We can start someone young who
maybe doesn't have great finances and they can start seeing at
the beginning good art.

Vicki Curry>> Although the gallery is open to everyone, it's
off the beaten path hidden away in the basement next to the
museum's private offices. But once you get there, it's like
discovering a buried treasure. So, Patty, in addition to the
things that are on the walls out in the gallery, there's also
some work here that people can come to look at to rent or
purchase?

Patricia Howard>> Yes. We have over a hundred artworks here in
the bins and a lot of the artists don't like to be in the bins,
but the renters love to come in here and have us show them the
work in the bins because they think they're going to find
something that nobody else has seen.

Vicki Curry>> So the artists that you represent here in the
gallery are all from the Southern California area?

Patricia Howard>> Yes, from Santa Barbara to San Diego.

Vicki Curry>> And how many do you have usually in the gallery?

Patricia Howard>> We have a little over two hundred that are
active artists --

Vicki Curry>> -- that you represent?

Patricia Howard>> Yes, and we have a variety of work too from
landscapes to abstract paintings to figurative paintings, so
there's a lot for them to choose from.

Vicki Curry>> The pieces are all priced by the artists
themselves, correct?

Patricia Howard>> That's correct, and then the rental price is
a range depending upon the price of the piece. Our top price
for purchasing is $6,000. Our rental range goes from $25 for
two months to $135 plus tax.

Vicki Curry>> Many people rent for years until the piece is
purchased. Others like to try out different art and some might
get to enjoy the work at their office since the gallery also
deals with companies.

Jill Fink>> The corporate program is by word of mouth and a lot
of designers come to us who know our work and they bring their
clients here to purchase them. We have many, many -- I think
last month one firm rented fifty-two pieces, so it's very large.

Patricia Howard>> They want work that is going to liven up
their work space, their lobbies, their conference rooms, their
various offices and hallways.

Vicki Curry>> The Rental and Sales Gallery started in the mid-
1960's, a project of the Art Museum Council, a volunteer
organization.

Jill Fink>> The Art Museum Council's mission is to raise money
for the museum. We purchase acquisitions and we fund different
exhibitions here. The Art Rental and Sales Gallery is a
tremendous source of income for us and primarily that's why we
wanted to start it. Well, over the years, we've purchased
approximately $8 million dollars worth of art for the museum.

Vicki Curry>> The gallery usually makes about $800,000 a year.
Most of that money goes to the artists.

Gail Rachelefsky>> And the glory of this gallery is that we
only take twenty-five percent. The artists get seventy-five
percent. I don't know any other place that an artist has that.

Richard Bruland>> Artists are used to a fifty-fifty split in
commercial galleries. That's pretty much the standard. The
fact that they give you a much larger percentage than that fifty
percent is really welcomed.

Vicki Curry>> For the artists, being chosen for the gallery or
one of its special exhibits can be a life-changing opportunity.

Richard Bruland>> It's a very prestigious place. It's allowed
my work to be seen by people that I just never would have had
the opportunity to place it in front of before. Sometimes in
commercial galleries, the general public gets left out. Down
here, you get a little bit of everybody from people who are
collectors and highly-educated in the arts to people who aren't
and really are trying to open up those doors and find out new
things.

Hei Myung Hyun>> I need to get out and show my work to people,
so this was a great chance. There are many Korean artists in
Korean communities. I tell actually a lot of my friends to
apply here to get in. I think to get out and then meet other
community artists, this is a great place.

Vicki Curry>> It is a great place for those lucky chosen
artists, but getting in isn't easy.

Gail Rachelefsky>> We look for someone who has talent and
someone who has emerging talent, someone that we can help and
feed and expose and someone that we can be proud of in having in
the museum. So it is a very selective process. The artist
finds out about us and they then submit slides. Then from the
slides, we choose who we want to see and then we go and make
gallery visits. We then interview the artist, go to his studio,
see what he's producing, how productive he is, see if he's ready
to be in the gallery.

Patricia Howard>> It gives the young artists a place to be. It
gives them confidence.

Jill Fink>> I think it's very important to support emerging
artists because they can get their foundation here. They can
have the exposure to the public much more than if they were in a
private gallery.

Richard Bruland>> Sometimes a gallery will insist that you keep
on working in the same way that you did the year before because
that was successful. They don't do that here. They really
allow the artists that are in this gallery to just work at their
own pace and to work in the direction that is natural for them.

Vicki Curry>> There's no pressure on them to sell, but the
unique opportunity for artists to rent their work can really pay
off.

Richard Bruland>> But for me, the rental component is extremely
important. That steady flow of income I find to be really,
really helpful especially as an artist.

Vicki Curry>> They may be struggling today, but these artists
might go on to become the greats of their time. It's happened
before.

Patricia Howard>> This is a ledger that I found in the cupboard
when I started working here. It goes back to 1966. These are
the artists who brought work to the gallery and there are
artists in here like Tony Berlant, Billy Al Bengston, Betty
Saar, Peter Alexander, who all were in the gallery at one time
or another.

Richard Bruland>> Well, first of all, it's the Los Angeles
County Museum of Art. It looks great on my resume (laughter)
and there's no question that a lot of people don't really make
the effort to go to galleries, but they do come here. All in
all, it opens doors.

Val>> All the art that's up for rent is on display and
available for viewing during regular business hours at the Los
Angeles County Museum of Art. And that's our program. I'm Val
Zavala. For everyone at Life and Times, thanks for watching.
We'll see you next time.

Life and Times was made possible through the generous support of
the L.K. Whittier Foundation dedicated to improving the quality
of life by supporting innovative endeavors in the fields of
medicine, health, science and education.

This program was made possible in part by a grant from the City
of Los Angeles Cultural Affairs Department.

Val>> Next time on Life and Times, California's community
colleges have had to cut classes and lay off staff and now
students and administrators are bracing for yet another round of
tuition hikes.

>> What this represents is a tax on students and these
individuals that come to community colleges are the least able
to pay.

Val>> That's next time on Life and Times.